Sometimes when you go to watch a video, you can kind of tell whether or not it’s a good video based on the ratio of likes to dislikes. It isn’t necessarily the best metric to use, but it can be a good indication on how the public in general feels about a video. However, YouTube is thinking of hiding it.
According to the company, it seems that they are interested in hiding the public dislike counter for videos. YouTube claims that this is done to combat targeted dislike campaigns, where people try to organize a group to try and dislike a video as many times as possible. YouTube also claims that this move could help with the well-being of creators, some of whom might feel upset or frustrated at a high dislike counter.
👍👎 In response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns, we're testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count. If you're part of this small experiment, you might spot one of these designs in the coming weeks (example below!). pic.twitter.com/aemrIcnrbx
— YouTube (@YouTube) March 30, 2021
However, YouTube does note that creators can still see the metrics of their video and see how well it is doing by going to YouTube Studio. The hidden figures are only on the public side of things where users can’t see how many dislikes a video has gotten. It sounds like an interesting idea and YouTube is not alone.
In the past, Instagram has also experimented with a similar idea where they were looking to hide the number of likes a post has gotten.
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